Stanley Kunitz Essay - Stanley Kunitz Poetry: American Poets Analysis

Stanley Kunitz constantly sought to achieve higher and higher ground, both in his thoughtful aesthetic and in his themes. Kunitz’s first poems were composed after the initial wave of modernism, led, in poetry, by T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound, had crested. They resemble, to some extent, the earlier, tightly organized, ironic poems of Eliot, though the influence of the seventeenth century Metaphysical poets, particularly George Herbert (again an indirect influence of Eliot, who was largely responsible for the resurgence of interest in the Metaphysicals), is probably more preponderant. Moreover, by the 1920’s, the work of Sigmund Freud had successfully invaded American arts and provided the introspective poet with a powerful tool...

(The entire section is 5519 words.)

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